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There are must be a lot of apps that are designed to communicate with server. My question is only about App installed on iOS device + Server side service interaction. Web app is not what I am talking about, and there should be no webpage involved in this discussion at all. Typical examples are Apps like Instagram and Twitter, in which most of the information exchanged between the App and the server is just data like String, Image and Integers(wrapped in JSON or XML), no webpage presentation needed.

My question will be: if you are an independent app developer, and you are designing such an app from scratch without any existing website API, database structure or application(so you are not limited by any existing API or database structure or application protocol), What will be the most efficient approach?

What the sever side need to do are:

  • receive data send by the App;
  • process the data with designed logic;
  • interact with database(like MySQL);
  • do necessary data mining and analysis---this could be a constantly running service or one time task requested by the App client;
  • send the data back to the App upon request or spontaneously;
  • exchange or broadcast the data between/among different App clients (i.e.: group chatroom and peer to peer message);

As far I as know there are 3 obvious options to implement the server side:

  • PHP
  • Python
  • Ruby on Rails

(please feel free to add more options)

My questions are:

  • which one is the most appropriate choice to implement the server side?
  • If the App is focusing intensively on natural human language/text searching, analyzing and data mining, which one is the best choice? I heard Python is doing pretty good in this area.
  • Any advice on the database choices? I am using MySQL for now, and I found it's quite powerful for my purposes, I heard Twitter is switching to Cassandra. Will that be too difficult to start with?
  • For the server end, if you need to build a Server management interface, for you as an admin to manage and monitor the community, membership, data and such, is there any existing solution, or framework or tool for that? what will be the most efficient approach?
  • If a new programmer has no experience in non of them, which one you suggest he/she to start with?
  • Is there any good reference material or sample code on the server side in such context we can learn from?

I know there are a lot of very experienced experts on these areas on Stackoverflow, but I saw more newbies who just entered the iOS developing area without much knowledge in server/database programming experience. And I hope this thread can help these who are thinking to design an App with server/client structure but have no idea where to start with.

ps: I will keep updating this question thread and adding my findings on this topic, to help all other users at stackoverflow. :-) Please try to make your answer informative, easy to understand, and constructive. I guess most of readers for this thread will be new members of this great community.

horacex
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3 Answers3

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Are you sure you want to spend time & money to develop your own Server & develop your own API? There are lots of mBaaS (mobile Backend as a Service) providers today such QuickBlox, Parse,StackMob, which are ready to use and they have great Custom Objects API and some of predefined modules. They have great free plans with big quota. Some of them such QuickBlox has Enterprise plan - so you can buy license and they server team update server for you purpose.

So, i recommend not develop your server and think about mBaaS market.

Just about your issue - I can recommend look at QuickBlox Custom Objects code sample and also Custom Objects API. Custom Objects module provides flexibility to define any data structure(schema) you need. Schema is defined in Administration Panel. The schema is called Class and contains field names and their type. I think it's what you need.

Rubycon
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  • which one is the most appropriate choice to implement the server side?

Well that depends on what you know, there is reason to choice one of the other

  • If the App is focusing intensively on natural human language/text searching, analyzing and data mining, which one is the best choice? I heard Python is doing pretty good in this area.

This would reflect on your first question, you pick the language on you needs. Thus if python makes it easier then pick that one.

  • Any advice on the database choices? I am using MySQL for now, and I found it's quite powerful for my purposes, I heard Twitter is switching to Cassandra. Will that be too difficult to start with?

Again not one that is easy to answer, since it all has to do with requirements. But any SQL server will do. Cassandra is meant for "scalability and high availability without compromising performance" accourding to there website. Do you think you webservice will get many request then it might be a choice to consider.

  • For the server end, if you need to build a Server management interface, for you as an admin to manage and monitor the community, membership, data and such, is there any existing solution, or framework or tool for that? what will be the most efficient approach?

This again is only going to be answered when you pick the a SQL server and server language.

  • If a new programmer has no experience in non of them, which one you suggest he/she to start with?

Start with something simpler, you are really going out on a limb here.

  • Is there any good reference material or sample code on the server side in such context we can learn from?

Propably there is some, but you should really start small and work from there.

Twitter started out as a Rub on Rails app and is working on scalability and availability which ruby is not really good ar (that is my person opinion). or Look at facebook they have written a php to c compiler to make php run faster.

The only thing I can say to start code, when you app does take off then tackle the some of the performance issues.

And since you state that you are new to programming do not bite of more then you can chew.

rckoenes
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  • really thank you for the quick response. :) Your answers definitely explains why there is so little information I can find on this big topic. Maybe as Shiny said, I asked a too big question. thank you for sharing and I will upload my findings on this topic. I am now starting with PHP+MySQL, so far so good. As you said, I will know more about this topic when I start to hit obstacles. – horacex Dec 06 '11 at 10:02
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This is a huge question and I don't think there is a best answer. It most depends on what you care about, such as how quickly the development process, how easily the implementation, etc.

And which one is popular, which one is cool, I don't think it make really sense.

In my personal opinion, I'm good at ASP.NET and I can get Windows server easily, so I'll start with an ASP.NET service to provides data.

And, to be continued.

Shiny
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